The sky was a cathedral of sorrow. Clouds hung low, heavy as penance, and the rain fell not in drops but in threads, fine and cold like the fingers of ghosts. A carriage, dark and glistening with the memory of the road, turned through the winding forest path that led to the front gates of Blackwood Manor. The iron gates groaned open like a sigh pulled from the lungs of the earth.
Elias sat within, shrouded in silence.
The storm had followed him all the way from Khyronia, as if the heavens themselves bore witness to his failure. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, both hands cupped against his face as if trying to bury the guilt, to crush it into something smaller. But guilt is never small. It breathes with you. It grows.
And August's face haunted him still— Not in pain, not in fear, but in that fragile, flustered blush.
That secret look, too delicate for the world, hidden behind pale hands, behind furrowed brows. Elias had seen it. He'd caused it. And yet he had let him slip away.
He hadn't been there when it mattered. He had failed the one thing he wanted most to protect.
The carriage slowed.
The manor stood solemn beyond the arch of twisted trees. Its stone walls wept with moss and time, the great door looming like the mouth of an ancient judgment.
As Elias stepped out, rain clung to him instantly, darkening his black coat and soaking through to the skin. But he did not flinch. He walked forward with the weight of a thousand regrets stitched into his stride.
The door opened before he could knock.
Lirael stood there, poised as always, but behind that marble composure flickered a candle of concern. Giles stood beside him, a chess piece forgotten mid-game, his eyes wide in disbelief.
"You came back alone," Giles said.
A sentence. A verdict.
Elias said nothing.
He walked past them both like a shadow. They followed.
Inside the Grand Hall – Where Silence Gathers
The warmth of the hearth could not touch him. Even as servants moved quickly to light candelabras and shed light against the storm, Elias remained in the center of the room, a monument carved from remorse.
Lirael's voice came soft but steady. "You left with August. Where is he now?"
Elias turned his head slowly, as if the question were a blade he expected.
"Gone," he said. Just that.
Giles stepped forward. "Gone where? Khyronia is vast, but—"
"Taken," Elias interrupted, his voice a chord unraveling. "The Eclipse Elite took him. They planned this. They waited until we were vulnerable. They were never after me. They wanted to separate us. And I—"
His voice cracked like old glass.
"I let them."
The silence after was vast.
Lirael, ever still, narrowed his eyes. "Do you know where they've taken him?"
Elias shook his head. "Elarith Vale. That's what I've heard. But it is not on any map. Not in any book."
At that, Giles pulled something from within his coat.
A letter.
He handed it to Elias. The seal was already broken.
"This came for you. Not long after you left. We thought it a hoax."
Elias unfolded the parchment with trembling hands. The words inside were penned in a sharp, almost elegant scrawl.
"He is no longer where you left him.
He is in hands that do not forgive.
The boy with silver eyes will die if Elias does not come.
Tick-tock, gentlemen. The curtain is already falling.
Elias's breath left him.
The ink had dried, but the weight of it had not. It pressed into his chest like the cold kiss of iron.
He looked up.
"I'm going to get him back."
Lirael stepped closer, expression unreadable. "And if it's a trap?"
"Then I'll walk into it," Elias said. "But I will not leave him to suffer alone. Not again."
The hearth crackled.
Lightning spoke across the windows.
In the distance, the storm began to turn.
The rain had softened by morning, but the sky still hung like bruised silk, heavy with silence. Inside Blackwood Manor, the fire in the hearth crackled like a whisper trying to steady itself. Outside, the world remained quiet — too quiet — as if even the trees were holding their breath.
Elias stood before the tall arched window in the study, his shoulders drenched not in rain, but in guilt. The folds of his black cloak clung to him like mourning. His hands rested on the window ledge, scarred fingers tightening around the stone. Behind him, two silhouettes watched — one calm and sharp as a drawn blade, the other tense with restrained panic.
Lirael leaned against the carved oak pillar, his arms crossed,sun kissed blonde hair falling across on left eye. His expression was unreadable, but his voice broke the stillness like steel across frost.
"We can't storm a place we don't understand."
Giles paced near the hearth, boots tapping against the floor with barely restrained urgency. "And yet they've taken him, haven't they?" he snapped. "Lord August. Taken under our noses — and you're speaking of maps and plans?"
Lirael didn't flinch. He uncrossed his arms, stepped forward, and spoke with the stillness of one who had seen war dressed in velvet. "If we rush without understanding what we face, we will not rescue him. We will join him in a grave none of us can see."
Elias turned then, slowly, like thunder rising over the hills. His green eyes gleamed like cracked emeralds. "Then tell me, Lirael. Tell me how to move forward when every moment he's gone, he bleeds in silence."
The silence that followed was thicker than smoke.
At last, Giles stopped pacing and looked between the two men. "There has to be a place to start."
"There is," Lirael said quietly, eyes narrowing. "We begin with what we do know. The letter was unsigned — but the seal was broken before it reached us. That means it passed through too many hands."
"And the mention of Elarith Vale?" Elias asked, voice low.
Lirael looked up at him. "We don't know the geography, but someone does. The merchant's network in Khyronia stretches farther than any noble house. We find the one who wrote that letter, or the one who tried to hide it — either way, we drag answers into daylight."
Giles added, "I can call on the cartographers in the west wing. There's a man who served under Lord August's father, Raden Everheart. If anyone would know the forbidden roads or shadow passes that lead to places unspoken, it's him."
Elias exhaled, breath hitching like a ship just before it sails into a storm. "Do it."
Lirael's gaze didn't leave Elias as he added, "And we must prepare for war, not just rescue."
Elias looked toward the fire. It reflected off his eyes like a promise. "Then let's start building that fire now."
The corridor stretched like a long-held breath, lined with tall, narrow windows that wore the early morning light like gauze. Elias moved slowly through the hush of Blackwood Manor, the soft tap of his boots the only sound that accompanied him. The weight of silence pressed on him—not the silence of peace, but the aching quiet of a name unspoken, of a room left untouched.
He passed by the familiar archway and stopped.
The door was half-closed, as if it had been left ajar by time itself. Elias knew this room like the lines of his own palm—August's study, the sanctuary where intellect and solitude danced in stillness. And yet now it stood hollow, not with absence, but with ghost.
He pushed the door open gently, the old hinges sighing like tired memories.
The room had not changed.
Books still lined the walls like sentinels, their spines worn with the touch of long hours. The ink pot on the desk had dried where it sat, its surface a blackened mirror. And the chair—the one that August always occupied, upright and dignified—stood vacant. A throne carved of dark mahogany, with arms worn smooth where August would rest his elbows while reading, thinking, ruling.
Elias stepped inside.
His eyes caught the faint curve left in the cushion, the impression of August's form still cradled there as if time refused to smooth it out. He imagined him there now, sitting with his back straight, white hair cascading over his shoulders like moonlight caught in lace. That unblinking focus, that stern grace—August always looked like he was made to belong to another century, a relic touched by fire and frost.
The scent of parchment lingered, still threaded with something fainter—perhaps the essence of rosemary oil, or the trace of some cologne Elias never dared ask about. He walked to the desk slowly, each step deliberate, reverent, like a pilgrim nearing a relic.
He didn't sit.
Instead, Elias placed his hand on the back of the chair and closed his eyes. The silence roared in his ears, full of words that should've been spoken, glances that had gone unanswered.
"You always looked like you belonged here," Elias murmured. "Like this place was built around your stillness."
His voice, hushed and rough, dissolved into the hush.
Guilt coiled in his chest.
He saw again that fragile blush August would try to hide—those moments where the mask cracked, even slightly, and something tender glowed beneath. Elias had let those moments slip by, afraid to name them, afraid to look too long and make them real. And now...
Now the chair was empty.
Now August was gone.
Elias ran his fingers along the edge of the desk, feeling the groove where August's rings had scraped the wood over time. Such small marks, insignificant on their own, but woven together, they formed a memory too sharp to carry.
He turned slowly and walked toward the fireplace. The embers had long since died, but he imagined the nights August had spent here—poring over ancient letters, pen in hand, back to the fire, unaware of how deeply Elias watched from the doorway.
He had watched too long, and acted too late.
His fist clenched at his side.
"I swear," Elias whispered to the cold stone and the air thick with memory, "I'll bring you back. Even if I have to tear apart the threads of this world to do it."
The wind outside howled gently, as if it carried the echo of a promise.
And the study remained still—an altar, waiting for its prince to return.